Celebrity sex tapes may be pretty standard tabloid fare in the Western media, but Chinese officials do not get such an easy ride. So when footage of Chongqing district party chief Lei Zhengfu having sex with his 18-year-old nursing-student mistress went viral, a major purge was to follow. The graphic images on Weibo led to Lei, 54, being sacked and facing allegations of corruption. But it also led to a wider investigation and the eventual charging of six people for luring prominent politicians into secretly videotaped sexual encounters that were later used for blackmail. A total of 21 local government officials and executives of state-owned enterprises were punished over the honey-trap scandal, according to state news wire Xinhua. “Another one is down,” wrote one Weibo user after a prosecution. “Judging from the recent series of Weibo anticorruption success, the prosecutorial organization is far less effective than Weibo!”
MORE: Communist Party Officials Gone Wild: Sex-Tape Scandal Rocks China